Just days after putting out his memo designed to allay staff concerns at Hewlett-Packard over the pretexting scandal, HP chief executive officer Mark Hurd seems to be in deep trouble with this week's revelations in the Washington Post that there were two dozen company emails showing the boss had approved an elaborate "sting'" operation on a reporter in February.

The shares have tumbled by 5 per cent. The stock market hates uncertainty, and this is taking longer to resolve than investors would like.

Hurd is scheduled to hold a press conference on Friday but don't expect him to say much, says David Needle from internetnews.com.

"There's plenty he could say, but I'm not expecting much. A notice about the press event sent to internetnews.com said there will a presentation by the law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, hired by HP, to provide information of its investigation of the leak.

"It's not quite the fox guarding the hen house, but I'd rather hear what an entity not hired by HP has to say.

"I expect the firm will provide cover for Hurd who will defer going into much detail about what he knew and when, pending the completion of the law firm's 'investigation'."

Still, investors will be listening closely and the concern now is that some of the mud is going to stick to Hurd.

Meanwhile former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Harvey Pitt has a piece in Forbes claiming that Hewlett-Packard's weirdness has lessons for companies, directors and investors.

"In the end, the relevant players lost sight of a critical facet of human nature - the identity of the leaker is less significant than the boards fear of the investigation.

"Running a modern-day multi-national corporation is no easy task. It takes smarts, hard work, diplomacy and
common sense. Unfortunately, in the zeal to identify those who wrongfully proffered corporate deliberations to the media, reliance on these critical traits was suspended."

More the point, HP has shown little in the way of smarts, diplomacy and common sense and any hard work has just left it with an even bigger mess.